Has anyone noticed that many people in the Ubuntu forums and IRC rooms are ruder than in other distributions?

Allow me to vent:

Ubuntu Warty was my first Linux. I installed it, but quickly left because the forums were pretty unfriendly to Linux newbies (I was told to "Do my own research" when I asked how to configure ndiswrapper). Now, I'm a lot more knowledgeable in Linux than before, but I still had an Ubuntu-specific question for my netbook install. I thought to myself--"Self, since the forums were so unhelpful in the past, maybe I should try the IRC channel to get my question answered."

So, I logged on to my trusty X-Chat client, connected to the #ubuntu room and asked my question. 15 minutes passed without anyone even acknowledging that I was present. So I asked again. 10 minutes passed, still not so much as a "hello". The third time I got frustrated and asked them to at least tell me they don't know the answer, instead of just ignoring me. The "ubotu" admin bot told me I shouldn't harass the other members of the room, and look up "attitude". Another user then told me he was giving my "money back" and not to let the "door hit me on the way out".

I never got my question answered, and eventually gave up on that room. I eventually found an answer in the Unity Linux room (#unitylinux)--a distribution that isn't connected to Ubuntu at all (It's not even a deb distro)!

Someone please tell me my experiences are uncommon! I would hate for Linux newbies to see this and run away--especially since so many people suggest Ubuntu for first-timers.

15 Replies

I found the whole Ubuntu community to be pretty bad. You have some nerd rage in all Linux forums/rooms, but I think it has something to do with it being the first distro that many people have used and they just didn't grow up with 20 people in #justlinux trying get atheros drivers working in Slackware 8.0 :O)

<insert back in my day comment here> but the Linux community was really good about helping when it was a smaller community and before everyone became an "expert" because they can type "apt-get"

You have a point Soule0913--"nerd rage" is inevitable. However, I have noticed it seems more pronounced in the Ubuntu community than other distributions. I've been a member of many other communities (PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, Debian, CentOS, Eeebuntu, EasyPeasy, Unity Linux, probably others) that don't have nearly the amount that Ubuntu does.

I'm about to get flamed for this but.... this is exactly the thing (or type of thing) that I keep talking about when people ask which Linux distro to use for business. It has nothing to do (directly) with the Ubuntu product but just with its "average" community member.

The Red Hat community is, on average, a 40 year old Fortune 500 SA whose day to day life includes keeping a large pool of highly valuable servers running 24/7.

The Ubuntu community is, on average, a 17 year old high school student running a desktop and trying to do some really cool stuff with it.

Nothing wrong with either one of those but when it comes to getting support for your business' production systems, I'd prefer those stodgy, old full time professional SAs. Not because they have more technical knowledge. Actually they probably don't. But because they understand business, uptime, reliability, accountability and, more often than not, present themselves more professionally.

The Ubuntu community, while active, gives, in my opinion, a black eye in the business world to a product that otherwise is very enterprise ready.

As a long time business AND home Linux user I think that it is pretty easy to see how the two grow. Ubuntu started off and still focuses on "cool and flashy" features for desktop use. It's all about graphical tools and stuff that looks really neat. It's target audience is tinkerers and home users and people using it as a desktop.

Red Hat effectively doesn't even make a desktop (they do but who cares about it, not flashy enough for anyone to care.) They make primarily command-line driven boring server products that sit in the back room doing reliable, but boring, tasks. Want the latest Ruby on Rails? Go elsewhere. Want the coolest Compiz? Go elsewhere. Want your server to have a ten year uptime? That's what they are there for.

It's all about target audience or target product and the audience that desires those products.

I've notice that with time, community for EVERY distribution is getting worse... I once was on RH (started with RedHat 5.1). I left because I was not happy with the community anymore... Same thing happened with Mandrake/Mandriva (started with Mandrake 9.1 and left with Mandriva 2006). Now, I'm with Ubuntu and I'm still happy with the community (when I need it... now, it's easy to find answers using regular search engines...)

Your experiences ARE common. People in the Ubuntu forums ARE rude (not so much compared to many other distros, but still). Hell, sometimes even paid support is rude (not Ubuntu specific).

The way I see it; any bit of free support from the community forums or an IRC chatroom or an outside website or anywhere is a small miracle. They get nothing out of helping you. NOTHING. This is why I've never asked anything until I'm 100% sure the question doesn't exist somewhere else. As a result, I've never asked anything, because I've always eventually found what I'm looking for. I just try to put myself in their shoes, and the course of solving the problem becomes clear: look for a past instance of the problem, and then KEEP LOOKING.

I mean, who the hell just sits around and answers technical questions for anyone for no reward whatsoever? These people can cuss me out, insult my mother, and then even if they only point me in the right direction (usually ubuntuforums.org, but not always) they are ANGELS to me. Why would they help me? Why should they? These people shouldn't even exist, yet they do, here to help.

Is it convenient? Oh hell no.

Can I run my business using it? HAHAHAHAHAno.

But the idea of being concerned over a "rude community" just baffles me. You need to be realistic about what exactly the community is, what it can to, what it will do, and what it won't do.

tl;dr: It's a miracle that a community for ANY distro exists at all, so don't view it as a personal army of happy-to-help tech guys. That's not what it is; that's what paid support is for, WHICH EXISTS AND IS A REAL THING.

I used to feel exactly like that, until I became a member of other, smaller communities in Linuxspace. Unity Linux and Linux Mint are filled with people that, yes, are there simply to help ask questions. I go on for much the same reason (unless I have a question of my own to ask).

As far as the research is concerned, I usually tell them what I've searched and/or tried before asking them for a straight answer. Often the answer is out there, but I didn't use the right search string so I didn't find it. I've had people from Linux Mint simply tell me to try searching for y instead of x, and I found exactly what I needed.

Having a bad day is one thing--getting frustrated because a bunch of people keep asking the same simple questions is understandable. But rudeness is never appropriate.

Why do you feel this way? Ubuntu is a VERY professional product. I've taken a lot of heat for saying that Red Hat or Novell Suse are better for resume building and for getting community support for exactly the reasons stated in this thread (Ubuntu's less than professional user base) but I certainly don't feel that Ubuntu isn't ready for the enterprise nor does Oracle who distributes it for Big Iron platforms. Ubuntu is a rocking product with amazing features, performance, stability, support, etc.

Or did you mean that you can't use the Ubuntu community to run a business?

Ubuntu IS a very professional product. The community, however, is not. You should not expect to run a professional business using Ubuntu with support solely based on the community. In fact, you shouldn't really expect ANYTHING from the community. That's what I'm trying to say.

Also, in regard to all of us answering tech questions on Spiceworks; thinking about it, it might be because we feel like we "owe" something to Spiceworks, and they only ask they we help out others and spread the word (and click on ads), to which we oblige, which then helps us feel more entitled to the software (plus the warm fuzzy feeling we all get). That doesn't make it any less amazing that it exists at all.

SAM, I wonder how many people's lives you've personally made easier (I'm one of them), or even how many people's jobs you've saved(not mine... yet). I personally hold you in the highest esteem. It's not flattery; it's true, and I feel the same for anyone else who helps someone with their lives/jobs for any reason whatsoever.

I guess all I'm trying to say is that the community is a wonderful, magical place with a few jerks, which is TOTALLY OK because it really shouldn't even exist in the first place (at least at that scale).

P.S. I love the idea of Red Hat and I love Red Hat as a company. The only time I could honestly discourage its use is with home users and with mom and pop shops (though sometimes it's appropriate even then).

I used to feel exactly like that, until I became a member of other, smaller communities in Linuxspace. Unity Linux and Linux Mint are filled with people that, yes, are there simply to help ask questions. I go on for much the same reason (unless I have a question of my own to ask).

As far as the research is concerned, I usually tell them what I've searched and/or tried before asking them for a straight answer. Often the answer is out there, but I didn't use the right search string so I didn't find it. I've had people from Linux Mint simply tell me to try searching for y instead of x, and I found exactly what I needed.

Having a bad day is one thing--getting frustrated because a bunch of people keep asking the same simple questions is understandable. But rudeness is never appropriate.

But WHY do you help others with these things? You don't have to answer; the fact that you do is awesome.

See, this is why I love FOSS. It's not because you don't see this kind of free help from Microsoft or Adobe or Apple product enthusiasts; it's that the whole thing was started with that idea, is maintained and updated with that idea, and that the kindness is infectious. If some people get pissed off every once in a while and ignored me, I'd take it as more of a reality check than an insult.

Ubuntu IS a very professional product. The community, however, is not. You should not expect to run a professional business using Ubuntu with support solely based on the community. In fact, you shouldn't really expect ANYTHING from the community. That's what I'm trying to say.

I see, yeah I agree. Not that you can't get great support from the community... you just need to wade through the crap :) I feel the same way about getting experienced Ubuntu staff - there are great people out there but the field is FULL of inexperienced yahoos who apply for every Linux job out there with no experience except "running Ubuntu at home as a desktop just to play games" which is not the same as running a production server where uptime matters.

P.S. I love the idea of Red Hat and I love Red Hat as a company. The only time I could honestly discourage its use is with home users and with mom and pop shops (though sometimes it's appropriate even then).

That's when I recommend CentOS with third party support (like we provide ;) Red Hat is great but if you confident in not needing the support then CentOS rocks. It's also great for development and lab environments.

I've run RHEL for years on hundreds of servers and have honestly never had to turn to Red Hat support - the product just works :)

SAM, I wonder how many people's lives you've personally made easier (I'm one of them), or even how many people's jobs you've saved(not mine... yet). I personally hold you in the highest esteem. It's not flattery; it's true, and I feel the same for anyone else who helps someone with their lives/jobs for any reason whatsoever.

Blushes :)

0

This discussion has been inactive for over a year.

You may get a better answer to your question by starting a new discussion.